Two-hundred seventeen years before the end of my world, a group of people were locked in a state of discontent.
Mordwell Verune, 250th Lassedite of the One, True, Resurrected Angelical Lasseditic Church sat on a priceless chaise longue, staring out a grand window, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his face. He was trapped in the Imperial family’s private quarters, in a world he no longer understood.
The story of Athelmarch and Lumon paraded through his mind.
Seven-hundred eighty-three years ago, at the apex of his glory, Eadric Athelmarch, 176th Lassedite, stood in the Seraglio of Dád Ábadá before Lumon the Great, the Sultan of Benun.
Lumon the Doomed.
It was the Second Crusade’s greatest triumph. After three bloody years, the Sultanate’s infidels had finally been brought to heel. Athelmarch’s generals had begun dividing the Sultanate into crusader kingdoms—the great Trenton Empire’s newest, farthest-flung provinces.
Eyewitness accounts on both sides confirmed that Eadric himself—clad in the hummingbird cuirass—had been the one to kill the Sultan, slicing him in half with the Sword of the Angel. As Eadric crossed the lagoon of pillows and jewel-studded rugs that surrounded the doomed Sultan and his amber throne, Lumon asked the Lassedite a question:
“Holy man: it is said of you have come to my lands bearing the favors of your God, and that your intent is to bringing his salvation to my people.”
Supposedly, Eadric smiled. “I am glad to hear this, O Sultan. Too often does rumor make a mockery of the truth.”
Dolefully, the Sultan shook his head. “Then I fear you have failed.”
“Why?” asked the Lassedite.
“The dead far outnumber the living. It has always been thus, and thus shall it always be. In the eyes of eternity, the living are but a drop in the sea, while the dead are as numberless as grains of desert sand. What righteous god would save the living before the damned?”
“The Godhead will know its own,” Eadric replied. “Those who are saved shall be saved; those who are damned shall be damned.”
And then he cut Lumon down.
It was a spectacular victory. Had Eadric ended the campaign there, his victory against the Sultanate would be remembered and lauded for as long as man waged war. But Athelmarch had set his sights on an even greater prize. After Benun, he would turn toward Maiko, intent on subduing the pagan Maikokans and teaching them the ways of God, and it was that hubris which would spell the 176th Lassedite’s undoing.
It was a famous tale. Everyone learned it in Sessions School.
As had Verune.
As had I.
But where the 176th Lassedite had been trapped by a lust for power and wanton vainglory, the 250th Lassedite faced a far more prosaic undoing: a locked door.
Even if there had been a way to remove the locks, the guards standing watch on the other side of the doors to the Imperial family’s residential quarters would have kept them from getting very far. They had weapons on their side, as well as the numbers needed to make them dangerous. There was no chance of escape. The Imperial Palace’s hundred-plus windows were kept under constant watch by a minor army of Hilleman’s troops, lying in wait in case any of the Imperial family or their allies were foolish enough to attempt a break out from their house arrest.
Verune wiped the sweat from his brow, daubing the moisture on his golden skullcap.
At long last, the Revolution had come to Elpeck. Thanks to Emperor Eustin’s pride, the Blueshirts had won control of the capital.
Eustin’s words echoed through Verune’s mind.
I will shoot Étro II in the head with my own pistol. That godless stripling deserves nothing less.
Eustin was too ruthless for his own good. Three months ago, the Fangs had lost the frisbee final to the Catapults, and, as would be expected, a riot had broken out over by Codman’s Wharf, and the army were sent in to quell it. Yet when the riot devolved into a protest against Eustin’s reign, the Emperor had the army shoot nearly five-hundred of his own citizens dead in the city streets.
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Thanks to that atrocity, Eustin’s ministers decided to side with the revolutionaries. They set the fuse for a quiet coup. All it needed was one last trigger. One last opportunity. One last rallying point.
And then Eustin declared war on Polovia.
Our southern neighbor!
Verune rubbed his eyes.
Unlike Odensk, whose people were genuine heretics—they refused to acknowledge the Resurrected Church—the Polovians were fellow Angelical Lassediles. So what if their new king refused to support Trenton’s military efforts! Odensk was an ungovernable pit of tyranny; like Cranter Pit in winter, only with more potatoes.
Verune recalled Eustin’s words:
Don’t worry, your Holiness. The people will see Ètro II for the godless beast that he is, and their thirst for downfall will be quenched by his blood.
What rubbish!
The people of Elpeck had very much thirsted for downfall—Eustin’s, not Étro’s. War with Polovia would have devastated the Trenton economy. Even without Eustin’s other abuses, the threat of war with Polovia would have been enough to sway many of the Emperor’s ministers to defect to Hilleman’s side. That Eustin had perpetrated so many abuses of power only made his downfall that much swifter.
The revolutionaries had struck at dawn, wresting control of the city gates without any opposition and opening them wide, welcoming in Hilleman and his Angelless Blueshirts. The government had fallen by brunch. The Imperial Palace was now little more than a gilded cage. But what a cage it was!
The luxury of the Imperial family’s residence rivaled that of the ethereal palace of the Moonlight’s Queen herself. Eustin and his brood lived their lives in a collection of interconnected masterpieces. The stone walls were a sculpted collage, colored like mineral flats drizzled in blood. The floors were polished marble—white as the Moon—dotted by an inlaid grid of hexagonal tiles of black opal.
The furnishings were no less opulent. Tables and chairs of varnished wood pawed at the floor with limbs of gryphons and dragons, as if to pin the opal tiles in place. The darkness danced in the shafts of mid-morning’s light. From the petticoat-soft handkerchief in the pocket of the Emperor’s riding trousers to the sumptuous red upholstery of the several chaises longues scattered about, there wasn’t a piece of fabric in sight that wasn’t woven through by filaments of gold. Just one of the bookcases in the living room (contents included) was worth more than an entire city block. Ornate pots on tables and the mantelpiece held exotic plants from overseas, particularly orchids—the Empress’ favorite. As usual, the orchids were dying, and a new shipment was already en route from Vaneppo.
Some of the guards had been betting over which would last longer: the Imperials or the orchids. From what Verune overheard hear, the orchids were in the lead. Whichever perished first—the orchids, the Imperials, or their Empire—the heads of the old regime had a front row seat to history turning a page, for as long as their lives allowed it. They needed to only look out the windows to watch the times change, following the crowds that marched through Elpeck’s stone-paved streets.
It was here that Verune found himself entombed, and the ancient Sultan’s words were there with him:
What righteous god would save the living before the damned?
Verune couldn’t silence that question. No matter how much he tried, nor how much he learned, it vexed him, festering within.
He knew the answer. How could he not? It was elementary theology. Even a first-year seminarian student would know it.
In the Primordial Age, mankind disobeyed God, and in doing so, brought death and sin into the world. Until the day the Angel Fell to bestow life, the truth, and the way upon mankind, human beings were doomed to reap the consequences of their primordial sins. God was Goodness itself, but Weakness was not Goodness. God was Justice itself, and Inequity was not Justice.
The moral of the story of Athelmarch and Lumon paraded through his mind. It was as clear as the midday sun: the Angel’s truth would always prevail. It was futile to stand against it; to do so was to oppose the very purpose of mankind’s existence. And yet, on this—the morning of the Trenton people’s great forsaking of the Godhead—Verune felt more empathy with the doomed Sultan than he did with Athelmarch.
The Lassedite’s breath fluttered in his chest like the Dicolor banners down below as the sea of people marched through the streets, waving the blue and the green. Verune presumed they thought they were welcoming a new age.
But they were mistaken.
If only they knew.
In the aftermath of the expulsion of the Munine, the Church had built itself up to for the purpose of burying the secret of Eadric’s undoing. The evidence was all but destroyed, the knowledge restricted. It would be the rôle of all future Lassedites to keep that knowledge safe and secret.
Eadric.
The Sword.
The nature of the Sword’s powers.
Scripture recited itself in the Lassedite’s ears.
Woe unto them who do not believe, for it would have been better that they were not born.
If only the people had believed; if only they understood the stakes at play. But they were insouciant and blind.
The Angel is not to be toyed with. His Wrath is to be feared.
But the people did not understand. Or, perhaps, they simply refused to.
Verune opposed the revolution because the revolution went against the Angel’s Church, and to stand against the Church was to invite divine retribution.
They welcome doom with open arms!
Wise men knew that all power was ephemeral. Only the transcendent endured. Man was mortal; his works were fated to join him in the dust. Great men understood this, whereas lesser men reacted with anger and impulse. After all, it was lesser men who viewed the world as but a calculus of mortal power.
But what is man compared to the power of God?
The Church was but a means to an end. Salvation was the reward for obedience, as surely as damnation was the punishment for defiance. The Church existed to keep the people true to their word, obedient to the Angel’s will, that He need not inflict His terrifying punishments once more.